July’s Four Seasons Food Round-Up

When I launched this month’s Barbecue and Barbecue Side’s event back on the 1st July I have to admit it was with a considerable degree of trepidation. Especially with regard to the folks in the UK, thinking I might just be jinxing yet another Summer! But 35 entries later and for the most part a gloriously hot and sunny month I’m pretty relieved to say the least. Phew. Thanks so much to everyone who joined in, as you’ll see from my round-up we have a wonderful array of barbecue and side dish delights to tickle everyone’s taste buds, from meaty mains to salady sides to post-barb cakey naughties.

Bethany at the Jewelled Kitchen launch

And to judge this month’s event I’m most delighted and excited to announce we have the gorgeous and enormously talented Bethany Kehdy no less!. For those of you unaware of Bethany’s many talents (too many for someone so young if you ask me!), she’s the founder and organiser of Food Blogger Connect (and I’m sure everyone attending this year will sing her highest praises), owner and tour guide ofTaste Lebanan and a food blogger at Dirty Kitchen Secrets. And as if this isn’t enough she’s now the author of The Jewelled Kitchen, launched at FBC this year along with a veritable feast of Middle Eastern delights from her book. And I so happen to be a proud owner of a signed copy of her beautiful and enchanting cookbook which I shall be delving into in the Autumn once I’m re-united with it again, sadly it had to be left in London for the time being.

Copies of the Jewelled Kitchen @ FBC5

So on to the round-up. As most of you know I’m more than a tad busy these days with my move to the UK timed (im)perfectly to co-incide with the big summer school holidays, so I’m going to keep things brief. And to be brief I’m steeling an idea I took from the lovely Vanesther of Bangers & Mash (who incidentally I was delighted to finally meet at FBC too, and would you believe she was even more lovely than I built her up to be!) to summerise each post in just a few simple words. I’m aiming at five but this could be tricky for a wordy woman like myself, but here goes….

In no particular order (as the entries got a little jumbled in my ad hoc pictorial representation!) we have:

And so there has to be a winner. And thankfully to make that tough choice we have Bethany and not myself!. Drum Roll……and the winner is…..another drum roll……Foodie Quine’s Pimm’s Salad! And this is what Bethany had to say about it:

I love to cook with booze and goodness knows how many alcoholic products I’ve experimented with in cooking. When I read the “Pimm’s salad” headline I was very intrigued. It’s very much inspired me to give this salad a go this weekend. Great effort everyone and thanks to the lovely ladies (Lou and Anneli) for asking me to Judge. Let’s hope this weekend is another Barbie worthy weekend 🙂

The winning prize this month is the Pitt Cue Cookbook. A copy will be winging it’s way over to you Claire. A very well deserved win, a fab choice Bethany!.

Thanks again to everyone for all your wonderful and inspiring entries. August is all about Summer Puddings and it’s once again over to Anneli at Delicieuxto host.

Hey Lou! What a great round up. I am so pleased that we had so many entries….and so many delicious ones at that! Sorry I m a day late getting the new challenge up. Life is still manic. Good luck with the move and have an enjoyable month off FSF! xxx

What an amazing round-up – how on earth have you managed to fit that in on top of the move?! So many fabulous recipes here. I’ll be bookmarking quite a few I think. I had a few dishes to enter last month but have no idea where July went to – will make sure I get a summer pud in for August’s challenge…

To be honest I’m not entirely sure either how I’ve managed to fit it all in! I shall however be taking a few weeks off now to get the new blog up and running AND possibly more importantly get unpacked and settled into our new house! July was a bit of whiz for me too, had another couple of barbie side recipes to add too, but time got the better of me 😦